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You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, it’s worth pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won.

It can’t, is the short answer, and one these companies do not want to hear as they put their fingers in their ears and start yelling. As technology continues to evolve, the battle between pirates and copyright holders is going to escalate, and pirates are always, always going to be one step ahead. To be clear, this is in no way meant to be a “pro-piracy” piece, it is merely attempting to show the inescapable realities of piracy that media companies refuse to acknowledge.

What’s clear is that legislation is not the answer. Piracy is already illegal in the US, and most places around the world, yet it persists underground, but more often in plain sight. Short of passing a law that allows the actual blacklisting of websites like China and Iran, there is no legislative solution. That’s what SOPA and PIPA were attempting to do, but it so obviously trampled on the First Amendment, it was laughed out of existence as the entire internet protested it. The only other thing you could get the internet to agree on was if they tried to institute a ban on cat pictures.

So, what to do? Go the other direction. Realize piracy is a service problem. Right now, from the browser window in which I’m writing this article, it is possible to download and start watching a movie for free in a few swift clicks.

(This is all purely theoretical of course)

1. Move mouse to click on Pirate Bay bookmark

2. Type in “The Hangover 2″ (awful movie, but a new release for the sake of the example)

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You’re assuming there is only one type of scarcity, which is a false premise. A DVD is hardly scarce. They’ll keep printing out copies until they overflow the $5 discount bin at the local stores. I wouldn’t call this scarcity because as long as the demand is there, the supply will never stop. In fact, as evidenced by $5 bins, the supply will eventually outstrip the demand – hardly scarce. What they need to do is market smarter in order to create true scarcity.

For an excellent example in what true scarcity could look like, I’d recommend you look in to how Trent Reznor has been handling his music releases, including making available entire high-quality digital copies at no cost. (article is a couple years old, but you’ll get the idea http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091119/1634117011.shtml)

It’s absurd to think that we can somehow legislate failing/failed business models in to success. I’m sorry, but the failure of these companies to keep up with what their consumers demand is foolish. It would be like the government taking steps to force people to buy horse-drawn carriages after the invention of the automobile.

I, nor any other rational person, is advocating that they let these things go for free. However, organizations like the MPAA and RIAA have been going at this in the most ham-handedly inept way from the start. They need to determine what consumers want and the most efficient way to get them to those people at the lowest point available. Failure to do so will simply result in more of this silly mess.

Steam, the online game distributor, is doing very, very well. In fact it’s user base is exponentially growing every year. Pirating games is just as easy as pirating movies, and yet Steam is making tons of money. Why? Because their service is much better than what pirates get.

People who have money (ie. the people who can buy the content) are looking for a convenient and easy way to get movies because morally pirating is wrong, but at the same paying 15 euros for a movie doesn’t make sense.

Also, the ‘X-1 steps’ argument doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense.

riprowan, the idea of scarcity doesn’t hold up, there is no scarcity anymore even with out piracy, most movies are released on dvd and itunes/digital download at the same time for convenience.

We live in a on demand world now, scarcity goes against that. if i went to a store and they are out of a movie or a game, why should i wait a week to a month for them to get it in. why am i being punished when i have the means and the need to get that game/movie but i cant because of scarcity.

Sadly,that is how a lot of people feel about DRM they are being punished for buying the game/movie. the restrictions on movies are ridiculous,some DVDs classify over 4 people as a public viewing. Games are just as bad having online passes preventing the game from being resold and preventing people with out Internet from playing the game. I dont think DRM is a bad idea, i think its a poorly executed idea.

The idea of “Only in Theaters” is just silly, the movies will always be there, the movies are an outing, an experience that cant be recreated easily and never will be. they should release them online the same day.

you just listed all of piracy’s strengths so of course your going to fail; 1. Free 2. Easier 3. More private but piracy has weaknesses too

1.Quality often you have to wait for DVD/BR to get any decent quality movie torrents 2.speed of download not all torrents download in 10min only some movies might download in 10min if you lucky. 3.Cleanness piracy is dodgy plan and simple. Fake torrents, viruses and broken files are common. when i was younger i tried downloading ice age( oh no), i got the iceage.avi and screenshot of the ice age movie but it turned out to be a porn movie (lol).

if they provided a clean, fast , quality alternative a percentage of people will go to it. hes not saying it will kill piracy that’s dumb. There is always going to be criminals

This comment is a small-scale example of the music and movie industries’ refusal to do the work of re-inventing the business model. The illustration of the movie shelf is NOT the foundational tenet. The foundational tenet is that information is no longer scarce. Scarcity, as I said in another comment, is the lie. It’s not a new issue. The new issue is that they can’t no longer profit from artificially manipulated scarcity. The profit will come from charging a reasonable amount for something of quality. People will always want to go to the movies so long as they don’t have to make the decision of either feeding one’s family OR going to a movie. This article is dead on and ripowan is dead wrong.

let’s kill a fly with an explosion. You could use watermark on you pictures you publish on your site. You could use low resolution pictures pictures. It’s not ok to hire 1 billion cops to watch everyone just because stores would like not to lock their stores over night and not hire additional staff to sell products. There is always another way than controlling everything. Anyway I thing that this big companies which make billions of dollars(aka have a profit rate of 200 or 300% ) sell their products too expensive. I would like to buy a good movie for 1-2 USD. If it is a good movie – they will sell a lot but if it is a crappy movie… But hey, this way It’s impossible to have profits over 100%. The same thing for companies that sell other goods, they say they have intellectual property and stuff like this but they did not pay anything to guys that discovered the base knowledge behind their invention…

Does any producer have an inalieable right to scarcity power? Look up the history of copyright and how thousands of people died trying to make copies of the Bible. The folks they were fighting and who were killing them would probably agree exactly with your ficticous idea of scarcity power. What about my rights to create abundance?

You idea about scarcity power just reminded me of the grapes of wrath where they had gaurds protecting fruit about to rot while children were starving, sickening.

The author clearly describes whole situation from “statistical internet user” point of view. He is fully aware whats legal and whats not. Its not a lie, its describing things as they really are in minds of people around the world.

Ha ha. Scarcity that has to be generated artificially isn’t really scarcity. The technology is making that painfully clear. The wrongheaded notion that you can make a non-scarce good into a scarce one is what’s driving this awful legislation. Legislating scarcity into existence is great for the bottom line of the monopolists who get the government to help them charge monopoly prices, but it’s bad for the rest of us who get our privacy and freedom curtailed and who don’t get to benefit from the lower prices and higher quality that copying, improvement and competition bring.

This is is the best mainstream media take on “piracy” and the futility of trying to fight it I’ve seen.